Ethan Ruan (阮經天) and Tiffany Hsu (許瑋甯) are an on-again off-again couple that people just love to talk about, probably because Ruan always seem on the verge of going off the rails with yet another bimbo. The couple were spotted by Apple Daily down in Kenting last weekend, and while they continue to strenuously deny that they are together, Hsu was sporting a contraceptive patch with her black bikini, which had the expected effect of whipping up media curiosity, and the two where tracked down to a guesthouse they were sharing. Apple Daily thought this shockingly inconsiderate behavior on the part of Ruan and Hsu, especially when they try so hard to avoid the media spotlight in Taipei. The fashionable pair also got their stories in a muddle when questioned by the media after taking to the stage this week at Paul Smith and Ferragamo catwalk shows. This all seems rather disingenuous given Ruan’s reputation and his long association with Hsu, but the Apple Daily is relentless, to misquote the Air Supply song, in “making news out of nothing at all.”
Chen Chu-he (陳楚河), a co-star with Ruan on the hit TV series To Love You Is My Destiny (命中注定我愛你), is also keeping the paparazzi busy at all hours of the night. Chen has been getting plenty of coverage for his recent, tempestuous liaison with Ella Chen (陳嘉樺) of the girl-group S.H.E, but now his attention seems to have turned to the abundantly endowed lingerie model Wang Yu-fei (王毓菲), better known as Hsiung Hsiung (熊熊). For the record, Wang is said to have a 32F cup-size, and Next magazine suggests that this is more than sufficient reason for Chen’s change of heart. Wang is said to be generous with her charms, and according to Next she is a well-known presence on the Internet, appearing in various photo sites. A delightful image of Wang holding a NT$50 piece between her pendulous protuberances, one of many images on www.g-years.com, a Web forum, is recommended for anyone who shares Next magazine’s breast fixation.
Carrying on the theme of the body beautiful, Coco Chiang’s (蔣怡) success in the basketball romance Hot Shot (籃球火) is helping make the bronzed look more popular in white skin-obsessed Taiwan. Dark skin began to register on the style charts with the appearance of Guatemalan-Taiwanese model Liz Yang’s (楊莉思) and her involvement with singer David Tao (陶吉吉), and is being reinforced by the relentless barrage of images of Janet Hsieh (謝怡芬), host of Fun Taiwan, whose career has blossomed recently following her romance with her manager Li Ching-bai (李景白).
While Pop Stop is sure that the spike in Hsieh’s exposure it due totally to natural talent, there are others in the entertainment industry who seem less coy about getting a little help from a friend. Little Pan-pan (小潘潘) has been having something of a rough time recently, what with getting busted for drugs last November — she was cleared but her name got dragged through the mud — then the show she was hosting, Videoland’s The Incredible World (不可思議的世界) got the chop. To console herself, she spent NT$200,000 at the plastic surgeons before the Lunar New Year, and has now just moved into a new apartment costing nearly NT$30 million. Next magazine suggests that it is an endorsement contract from Q.T. Skin (六員環有限公司) owned by “close friend” Yen Chien-cheng (嚴健誠), that is keeping the wolf from Little Pan-pan’s door.
Growing up in a rural, religious community in western Canada, Kyle McCarthy loved hockey, but once he came out at 19, he quit, convinced being openly gay and an active player was untenable. So the 32-year-old says he is “very surprised” by the runaway success of Heated Rivalry, a Canadian-made series about the romance between two closeted gay players in a sport that has historically made gay men feel unwelcome. Ben Baby, the 43-year-old commissioner of the Toronto Gay Hockey Association (TGHA), calls the success of the show — which has catapulted its young lead actors to stardom -- “shocking,” and says
The 2018 nine-in-one local elections were a wild ride that no one saw coming. Entering that year, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized and in disarray — and fearing an existential crisis. By the end of the year, the party was riding high and swept most of the country in a landslide, including toppling the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in their Kaohsiung stronghold. Could something like that happen again on the DPP side in this year’s nine-in-one elections? The short answer is not exactly; the conditions were very specific. However, it does illustrate how swiftly every assumption early in an
Inside an ordinary-looking townhouse on a narrow road in central Kaohsiung, Tsai A-li (蔡阿李) raised her three children alone for 15 years. As far as the children knew, their father was away working in the US. They were kept in the dark for as long as possible by their mother, for the truth was perhaps too sad and unjust for their young minds to bear. The family home of White Terror victim Ko Chi-hua (柯旗化) is now open to the public. Admission is free and it is just a short walk from the Kaohsiung train station. Walk two blocks south along Jhongshan
Francis William White, an Englishman who late in the 1860s served as Commissioner of the Imperial Customs Service in Tainan, published the tale of a jaunt he took one winter in 1868: A visit to the interior of south Formosa (1870). White’s journey took him into the mountains, where he mused on the difficult terrain and the ease with which his little group could be ambushed in the crags and dense vegetation. At one point he stays at the house of a local near a stream on the border of indigenous territory: “Their matchlocks, which were kept in excellent order,
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